FBI: 12 of 19 hijackers had ties in Florida

MIAMI -- Twelve of the 19 hijackers in the suicide attacks had ties to Florida, the FBI said Friday.

Since Tuesday's attacks, the agency has scoured flight school records across the state and searched apartments and homes believed to have been rented by the hijackers.

Two of the suspects, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi, crisscrossed Florida taking flight lessons before separating in Boston, according to people interviewed by the FBI.

Atta boarded an airliner that slammed into the World Trade Center's north tower. Al-Shehhi's airliner crashed into the south tower 20 minutes later. Two more planes were hijacked and went down, one in the Pentagon and the other in a field in Pennsylvania.

FBI officials in Miami and Washington have declined to discuss details of the agency's investigation in Florida.

Atta, 33, and Al-Shehhi, 23, were from the United Arab Emirates and had studied at the Technical University in Hamburg, according to German authorities. Both took flight lessons at Huffman Aviation in Venice, 70 miles south of Tampa, and later moved to Hollywood outside of Fort Lauderdale.

Atta and Al-Shehhi also trained on a Boeing 727 full-motion simulator at SimCenter Inc. in the Miami suburb of Opa-locka and Jones Aviation at the Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport south of Tampa.

Investigators were looking into connections with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which produces a quarter of the nation's commercial pilots.

Waleed Alshehri graduated in 1997 from the school with a bachelor's degree in aeronautical sciences, the university's commercial pilot training program, and held a commercial pilot's license.

David Charlebois, the first officer on American Airlines jet that crashed into the Pentagon, graduated from the school in 1983.

''Words cannot express the pain we feel,'' said Dr. George H. Ebbs, Embry-Riddle's president. ''At this point, we just don't know the extent of our losses.''

The FBI has also been searching apartments, homes and motel rooms around Florida.

Richard Surma, manager of Panther Motel, said federal and local law enforcement investigators had been combing a room for clues related to the attacks since Wednesday. The room had been rented by two men about two weeks ago, and investigators believe it was Atta and Al-Shehhi.

Also Friday, the Coast Guard stopped a Carnival cruise ship as it entered the Port of Miami and took two people off to be turned over to the FBI, a company spokesman said. Neither agency would say whether the people were connected to Tuesday's attack.